Courtesy of the ever-astute Victor Davis Hanson:
“What do they teach at Yale (and Harvard) law school? Is admission there synonymous with graduation?”
This Nanny Ain’t Mary Poppins
According to England’s Tory work and pensions spokesman Theresa May, “The reality is that … there has been a steady growth in welfare ghettos – unemployment did not disappear during the boom years. It was merely disguised, renamed, and hidden away in ever-growing pockets of poverty.” It is further stated that “most of those covered in the statistics do not appear in official unemployment figures,” and that “at least five million people of working age have not done a day’s work since Labour came to power” (in 1997).
For those who aren’t good at subtlety, in America the English Labour party’s counterpart are the Democrats.
Jolly good hope and change and all that rot. Gives a whole new meaning to “nanny”, eh?
Asking Tough Questions
Van Jones is history. Ultimately he will be just another ugly little blip on the radar; hoisted firmly onto his own petard by his personal, self-avowed Communist manifesto and his radical socialist organizing and, ultimately, by his own big, foul mouth.
Despite the ready availability of the material record of Jones’ own stupidity, including that he called Republicans “assholes” only one month before Obama appointed him as his “Special Advisor for Green Jobs”, the mainstream media is playing their violins in chorus of his “I was smeared” excuses. Falling right into Obama and his administration’s divisive tactics and once again failing to do their job of reporting facts. It’s a funny switch, this; news op/ed folks bringing to light hard facts while “regular” news reporters and degreed journalists simply drool over every word spun out on the teleprompter and opine derisively about those who hold a differing opinion.
But I digress.
Van Jones is merely one little pawn in a very big game. He is merely a symptom of an attempt to overthrow the United States Constitution; an overthrow long in the planning. To ask serious questions about the eligibility of Van Jones to hold a prominent and unaccountable position in the Obama administration is but the first step in crushing the wolf in sheep’s clothing known as the “progressive movement”.
What must now be asked is exactly WHO KNEW about Jones’ claims to Communism, his arrest record, his creation of STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, a group explicitly committed to revolutionary Marxist politics) and Color of Change, as well as his many crude public statements? John McCormack explains in a short piece in the Weekly Standard that if Jones had answered their questions truthfully, the FBI would have been fully aware of his less-than-savory…errrr…normal past and (emphasis mine):
… the background report would go to the Counsel’s office (run by Greg Craig), who would then raise the question of whether what the FBI found was disqualifying with the potential employee’s boss. Jones was hired by Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley, but he presumably (and ultimately) reports to the chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel must have decided that nothing in Jones’s background was alarming enough to prevent his appointment.
So … it’s worth asking: Did Rahm sign off on Jones’s appointment despite what the FBI must have discovered about his background. And, incidentally–did Jones tell the truth to the FBI?
These questions must be asked about ALL of Obama’s appointees and nominees. The President, his administration, and Congress are there by the will of we, the people, to SERVE our interests and to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” and we, the people, are entitled to straight answers about those who make it their life’s work to subvert it.
Another Example Of Why They All Must Go
Michelle Malkin recently posted a piece about Representative Pete Stark (D-CA). In it, she has documented his rude, crude, and socially unacceptable reactions to being questioned.
Just don’t allow the children around when you watch it.
It is this kind of blatant, know-it-all arrogence and contempt for their constituents that has finally awakened the silent and mainly conservative majority, much to the August recess angst of Congress critters of all stripes. They can try to spin it all they want, but as more and more light illuminates the dangerous mindset of the vast majority of our unrepresenting representatives at all levels of government, the more we, the people, realize the need to take matters (back) into our own hands.
Bummer, dudes and dudettes. Or is that, bummer, commies, Marxists, progressives, and socialists? You have no one to blame but yourself. Well, maybe you can blame the mainstream media, who have allowed you to flourish like a poisonous, noxious weed.
After too-long of a long sleep, we’re going to pull you all out by the roots and burn you with the brush pile.
If You Wonder What The President Thinks…
…then pay attention to the White House spin. On George Stephanopoulos’ show, This Week, George and Robert had the following exchange:
GEORGE: “So the president doesn’t endorse in any way the things that Van Jones said before but the president doesn’t want him to go?’
GIBBS: “He doesn’t but he thanks him for his service.”
Folks, that’s like saying “yes” when someone asks you if you want chocolate or vanilla ice cream. It’s a non-answer. A deliberate feint.
In the interests of that Obama-vaunted “transparency”, let’s call ’em clearly. They are weasel words.
What they really tell us is that President Obama knows full well what’s going on in his administration and won’t do anything about it unless his own image becomes tarnished when the views and actions of those he selects to advise him finally become visible to the mainstream, majority, and ultimately rather conservative American public.
So while Van Jones may be the first casualty of the White House’s socialist agenda, the victory celebrations must necessarily be brief. For there is a lot more rot left to root out.
Next?
One down, at least 31 more to go:
“I am resigning my post at the Council on Environmental Quality, effective today.
On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.
I have been inundated with calls – from across the political spectrum – urging me to “stay and fight.”
But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future.
It has been a great honor to serve my country and my President in this capacity. I thank everyone who has offered support and encouragement. I am proud to have been able to make a contribution to the clean energy future. I will continue to do so, in the months and years ahead.”
Did he sign it, “Love & Commie Kisses, Van”?
It’s really a pity that someone who is apparently so bright went so wrong. First by buying into the victim mentality and then by using that bright mind to push for something that history has proved time and time again will reward no one but a few who pull the real strings.
It’s time for reflection, Van. A time to realize that you, along with so many others, have simply been used to further the ambitions of a few, and to understand that there never was a place for you at their exclusive, elitist table. That was only a carrot dangled in order to get you to be a front man and to take the fall for them should, as has happened, their nefarious tactics come to light.
Knocking down others in order to raise yourself has never worked. Only by supporting the United States Constitution will you find that you may freely pursue your own happiness and, in that pursuit, perhaps even find it.
Saving The Failure For Posterity?
It is narcissistic at best. Considering the behavior of this administration to date, at worst it smacks of the McCarthy era.
The White House wants to save everything to do with President Obama for his eventual presidential library. This includes information posted by the President on the internet. Not a bad thing, until you read just how this is now being hired out.
Here are the pertinent parts:
1. Purpose
The purpose of this Statement of Objectives (SOO) is to obtain the necessary services to ensure that content published by the Executive Office of the President (EOP) on publicly-accessible web sites is archived in accordance with the Presidential Records Act (PRA), that information posted on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP maintains a presence is archived in accordance with the PRA, and that all archived information is securely stored and provided to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for historical preservation, in accordance with the PRA.
2. Scope
The contractor shall provide the necessary services to capture, store, extract to approved formats, and transfer content published by EOP on publicly-accessible web sites, along with information posted by non-EOP persons on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP offices under PRA maintains a presence, throughout the term of the contract. The contractor shall if possible, capture, store, extract to approved formats, and transfer content published by EOP on non-public websites. The contractor shall include in the information posted by non-EOP persons on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP maintains a presence both comments posted on pages created by EOP and messages sent to EOP accounts on those web sites. Publicly-accessible sites may include, but are not limited to social networking sites. The contractor shall provide a user-friendly way of organizing and searching captured information. The contractor shall properly transfer the captured information, as identified by EOP, to NARA in an acceptable format for both preservation in NARA’s Electronic Records Archive and presentation at the future Presidential Library. The Contractor shall provide a method to separate content posted by other EOP component offices as required.
3. Period of Performance and Place of Performance
The period of performance is for twelve months from date of award and seven one year options for a total of eight years. The work may be performed and stored at the Contractor’s facility as appropriate.
4. Background
In order to comply with the Presidential Records Act, the White House New Media team is looking for a non personal service contractor to crawl and archive PRA content on all third party sites where the EOP has a presence (i.e. Facebook.com/whitehouse, Twitter.com/whitehouse). Currently, the Government team is capturing the data and content both programmatically (via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) from social networks) and manually (through daily screen shots). EOP requires a provider to ensure we automatically capture this content in a scalable, efficient and reliable manner.
5. Performance Objectives
(A) The scope is to capture, store, extract to approved formats, and transfer to NARA all content posted by EOP components subject to the PRA on publicly-accessible websites during each calendar year.
(B) Capture and store content of any kind, including text, graphic, audio, and video, in any existing file format.
(C) Demonstrate an ability to adapt to and archive new file formats that are created after the initiation of this contract.
(D) Capture and store content regardless of whether it is uploaded from the EOP network to the site or created directly on the site.
(E) Capture all created content at regular intervals daily, ensuring the retention of any deltas introduced between captures per day (it is preferable, but not necessary, for vendor to capture content that was added to a site and subsequently removed in the interval between captures). Vendor must capture content at least twice a day, and preferably would have a process to initiate a re-crawling of the content on demand.
(F) Capture (and later display) content in context, as it appeared on a given web page.
(G) Capture of comments and publicly-visible tags posted by users on publicly-accessible websites on which an EOP component subject to the PRA maintains a presence. Vendor must be able to either:
(i) Capture all comments posted to a list of websites provided to vendor; or
(ii) Capture a sample of comments posted to a list of websites provided to vendor, according to a sampling methodology that will be provided to vendor and approved by EOP.
(H) Provide the ability to search and/or organize collections by website, keyword, date and/or filter by file type.
(I) Store and transfer data in a manner that preserves both the record content, associated with comments, and related objects, as they were created and with the relationships they exhibited on the web page at the time of capture creation.
(J) Ability for government employees to tag captures from publicly-accessible websites by arbitrary fields or tags such as office or issue (i.e. OVP or health care).
(K) Provide a web-based tool for government employees to administer and manage this record-keeping. (i.e. add new publicly-accessible websites to the crawl or adjust the crawl frequency). Provide a minimum of 10 simultaneous login accounts.
12. EOP Special Contract Requirements
12.1 Restriction Against Disclosure
12.1.2
The Contractor agrees, in the performance of this task order, to keep the information disclosed to the Contractor, or information contained in the source documents furnished by the EOP or otherwise obtained in the course of its employment in the strictest confidence, said information being the sole property of the EOP. The Contractor also agrees not to publish, reproduce or otherwise divulge such information, in whole or in part, in any manner or form, nor authorize or permit others to do so, taking reasonable measures as are necessary to restrict access to the information, while in his or her possession, to those employees who must have the information to perform the work provided herein on a ?need-to-know basis, and agrees to immediately notify the Contracting Officer in writing in the event the Contractor determines, or has reason to suspect, a breach of this requirement. The Contractor is responsible for ensuring all employees involved in the performance of this task order sign a ?Non-Disclosure Agreement (See Attachment 1). The Contractor shall provide an original copy of each signed statement to the Contracting Officer prior to each employee beginning work.
13. Prohibition of Advertising of Award
13.1
The Contractor shall not refer to this award in commercial advertising, or similar promotions in such a manner as to state or to imply that the product or services provided is endorsed, preferred, or is considered superior to other products or services by the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and any of its components including the White House. This includes advertising, or similar promotions, in all forms or electronic, broadcast, and print media.
13.1.2
In addition, the Contractor is restricted from reproducing the image(s) of the EOP or the White House in any form of commercial advertising, or similar promotion. This includes images of official seals and buildings. The reproduction of official seals and the images of buildings are a matter controlled by regulation and Executive Order. Any proposed usage of such symbols must be brought to the attention of the Contracting Officer (CO).
From the Q&As:
2. Approximately how many sites are controlled by EOP?
Answer: The 7 networks where the EOP currently maintains a presence are:
www.facebook.com/whitehouse
www.twitter.com/whitehouse
www.myspace.com/whitehouse
www.flickr.com/whitehouse
www.youtube.com/whitehouse
www.vimeo.com/whitehouse
www.slideshare.com/whitehouse
4. Is there an incumbent currently performing this work (even manually)?
Answer: There is no incumbent the Government staff does this manually.
9. The Presidential Records Act does not require the storage or archiving of non-EOP content, as such is there a specific reason as to why the content provided on EOP related websites in the form of comments is included in these archiving procedures?
Answer: The PRA includes in its definition of presidential records content “received” by PRA components and personnel. Out of an abundance of caution, we are treating comments made by non-PRA personnel on sites on which a PRA component has a presence as presidential records, requiring them to be captured or sampled.
10. Has NARA’s Electronic Records Archive expressed an interest in public content contributed to EOP websites?
Answer: See the answer to question #9.
Now if all this was just for the sake of posterity and just to be sent to the National Archives, why do government employees need to the ability to sort and search the data for words like “health care”?
I can’t help but wonder if they’ll also be including an archive of the Organizing For America website, particularly when it referred to citizens showing up at townhalls as “Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists“?
Oil, Bloody Oil
December 21, 1988
PanAm Flight 103
243 passengers
16 crew members
11 people on the ground in Lockerbie, southern Scotland
As “the cockpit broke off, tornado-force winds tore through the fuselage, tearing clothes off passengers and turning insecurely-fixed items like food and drink trolleys into lethal objects. Because of the sudden change in air pressure, the gases inside the passengers’ bodies would have expanded to four times their normal volume, causing their lungs to swell and then collapse. People and objects not fixed down would have been blown out of the aircraft into the 46 °C (?50.8 °F) outside air, their 31,000-foot (9,400 m) fall lasting about two minutes. Some passengers remained attached to the fuselage by their seat belts, crashing in Lockerbie strapped to their seats.
“Although the passengers would have lost consciousness through lack of oxygen, forensic examiners believe some of them might have regained consciousness as they fell toward oxygen-rich lower altitudes. Forensic pathologist Dr William G. Eckert, director of the Milton Helpern International Center of Forensic Sciences at Wichita State University, who examined the autopsy evidence, told Scottish police he believed the flight crew, some of the flight attendants, and 147 other passengers survived the bomb blast and depressurization of the aircraft, and may have been alive on impact. None of these passengers showed signs of injury from the explosion itself, or from the decompression and disintegration of the aircraft.”
“A boy was lying at the bottom of the steps on to the road. A young laddie with brown socks and blue trousers on. Later that evening my son-in-law asked for a blanket to cover him. I didn’t know he was dead. I gave him a lamb’s wool travelling rug thinking I’d keep him warm. Two more girls were lying dead across the road, one of them bent over garden railings. It was just as though they were sleeping. The boy lay at the bottom of my stairs for days. Every time I came back to my house for clothes he was still there. ‘My boy is still there,’ I used to tell the waiting policeman. Eventually on Saturday I couldn’t take it no more. ‘You got to get my boy lifted,’ I told the policeman. That night he was moved.” (Bunty Galloway, as told to authors Geraldine Sheridan and Thomas Kenning in 1993)
“…the wing section hit 13 Sherwood Crescent at more than 800 km/h (500 mph) and exploded, creating a crater 47 m (155 ft) long and with a volume of 560 m³, vaporizing several houses and their foundations, and damaging 21 others so badly they had to be demolished. Four members of one family…died when their house at 15 Sherwood Crescent exploded. A fireball rose above the houses and moved toward the nearby Glasgow–Carlisle A74 dual carriageway, scorching cars in the southbound lanes…. Father Patrick Keegans, Lockerbie’s Roman Catholic priest was getting ready to go to visit his neighbours at around 7 pm [but] there was nothing left of them to bury as they and nine others were killed in the street….”
Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was eventually convicted of the bombing of PanAm Flight 103 and sentenced to life in prison in Scotland.
From Libya, there was eventually an admission of guilt. But there was no admission of remorse. In a BBC Two documentary, 31 August 2008, Saif al-Gaddafi said that Libya had admitted responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing simply to get trade sanctions removed. He also described the families of the Lockerbie victims as very greedy: “They were asking for more money and more money and more money.”
From the Sunday Times Online:
Today we report on a letter written by Jack Straw, Britain’s justice secretary, to his Scottish counterpart in December 2007. In it he overturned a previous understanding that Mr Megrahi was exempt from a prisoner transfer programme agreed between Britain and Libya as part of the Blair-Gadaffi discussions. A few months earlier the government had been clear on that exemption. Lord Falconer, then lord chancellor, wrote to Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish National party, saying Libya had agreed that the Lockerbie bomber would serve out his sentence in Scotland.
What changed? The strong circumstantial evidence is that a lucrative agreement to allow BP to explore for oil off the Libyan coast was being held up by Mr Megrahi’s exemption from the prisoner transfer programme. The idea that the Westminster government had no view and no influence is not credible.
Last week we reported on a letter sent by Ivan Lewis, a Foreign Office minister, to the Scottish government. In it he said there was no legal barrier to the release of Mr Megrahi, adding: “I hope on this basis you will now feel able to consider the Libyan application in accordance with the provisions of the prisoner transfer agreement.”
And so Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, reportedly with only a few months to live because of prostate cancer, was set free by Scotland on “compassionate grounds” after spending only 8 years in prison. He returned to his homeland on August 21st, where he was greeted by enthusiastic crowds.
Saif al-Islam al-Gadhafi told The Glasgow Herald in an exclusive interview published August 28th, “Lockerbie is history. The next step is fruitful and productive business with Edinburgh and London.”
So the question must be stated: Would Britain have allowed this deal to be undertaken without informing President Obama in advance?
After all, scores of Americans were murdered by his action. The families have suffered for close to twenty years. A moving account of one family’s trauma appeared in an op-ed yesterday written by Robert P. George. As George writes: “What did American officials know about the decision to free Megrahi and when did they know it? What, if anything, did our government do to try to prevent it? Remember, 180 of Megrahi’s victims were our fellow citizens. President Obama had a right to be informed in advance of what Scotland was planning to do and a duty to do everything in his power diplomatically to prevent this outrage.”
Did Barack Obama phone Gordon Brown and object strenuously before the release? Did he really not know of Britain’s plans until after it was too late? Frankly, this is rather hard to believe. If almost 200 British subjects were killed on American soil in a terrorist attack, and the perpetrator was freed in a commercial deal by the U.S. government, it is hard to imagine that any administration would not first have informed the British government of what was going to take place.
So the question remains: What did Barack Obama know, and when did he know it?
As both an apologist for dictators and a staunch supporter of drilling for oil – in other country’s backyards – it is not inconceivable that this adminstration knew about what is being called a trade of blood for oil. According to Obama’s very own media outlet, MSNBC:
Gadhafi, now in his mid-60’s and after 40 years in power as the region’s longest-serving leader, wants to see Libya become the gateway to development in Africa.
The United States apparently agrees with part of his vision. American companies are major players in the oil industry and development projects which will try to transform this desert nation into a modern state within the next ten years.
John Rainard is the Chief Operating Officer of AECOM, a Los Angeles-based engineering firm running a $10 billion project here to rebuild Tripoli and other population centers in Libya from the ground up. Housing, roads, water and electrical systems will form the backbones of the new country.
And from the 2008 annual report of AECOM:
The U.S. election in November 2008 produced good news for AECOM, as voters approved more than US$54 billion of state/local bond issues, and over US$60 billion of tax measures. We expect that a large portion of this money will be used to fund infrastructure projects in transportation, healthcare and environmental work in markets and geographies where we have a well-established presence. In addition, we anticipate that the U.S. economic stimulus and infrastructure packages will be focused on the type of programs that are at the core of our expertise and experience.
Only Losers Pay To Play
It was laughable enough to uncover that the left-wingnuts are actually paying people to protest against Americans protesting socialized medicine in the form of HR 3200, but now they’re presuming the Kool-Aid drinkers can actually read and that they care about what books are topping the best-seller lists.
“50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America“, courtesy of “Progress Now”, is hitting the bookstores and in order to offset the lack of content, they’re sponsoring a contest to help spur sales:
“It never hurts to offer a little incentive, especially if your incentive has the potential to drive extreme right wingers crazy, so among our prizes is a grand-prize of a trip for two to Honolulu, Hawaii for a private tour of the hospital where President Obama was born, followed by an opportunity to take part in a community service project there on MLK Day of Service, January 18, 2010.”
They also want stories about how “people can help Obama change America for the better”. How about we start with a most basic one: impeach every member of the administration who is failing to uphold their oath of office.
The Las Vegas Review Journal Tells Senator Reid To “Shove It”
Still basking in the now-fading glow of “I won”, Senator Harry Reid displayed the attitude that has ordinary Americans looking at politicians like some kind of alien vermin that must be eradicated at all costs.
According to the Las Vegas Review Journal’s publisher, Sherman Frederick, just before last Wednesday’s Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Senator Reid told their director of advertising, “I hope you go out of business.”
“You could call Reid’s remark ugly and be right. It certainly was boorish. Asinine? That goes without saying.
“But to fully capture the magnitude of Reid’s remark (and to stop him from doing the same thing to others) it must be called what it was — a full-on threat perpetrated by a bully who has forgotten that he was elected to office to protect Nevadans, not sound like he’s shaking them down.
“No citizen should expect this kind of behavior from a U.S. senator. It is certainly not becoming of a man who is the majority leader in the U.S. Senate. And it absolutely is not what anyone would expect from a man who now asks Nevadans to send him back to the Senate for a fifth term.
“If he thinks he can push the state’s largest newspaper around by exacting some kind of economic punishment in retaliation for not seeing eye to eye with him on matters of politics, I can only imagine how he pressures businesses and individuals who don’t have the wherewithal of the Review-Journal.
“For the sake of all who live and work in Nevada, we can’t let this bully behavior pass without calling out Sen. Reid. If he’ll try it with the Review-Journal, you can bet that he’s tried it with others. So today, we serve notice on Sen. Reid that this creepy tactic will not be tolerated.
“We won’t allow you to bully us. And if you try it with anyone else, count on going through us first.
“That’s a promise, not a threat.
“And it’s a promise to our readers, not to you, Sen. Reid.”
Spot on, Mr. Frederick. Spot on.
How about sharing whatever it is you’re drinking with the rest of the mainstream media?
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